Introduce a little anarchy

Why do men have to wear neckties to work or church? What possible purpose can a 40 dollar bit of fabric around our neck actually serve? It's not practical, not necessarily anymore attractive. Yet, society demands we wear them. For years, my job’s official dress code required it. It didn't matter to the ones who made the dress code that the necktie was actually a symbol of wage slavery, of white supremacy, of the capitalist ‘members only’ mentality. 

I hated wearing a tie, and often didn’t wear one the whole day if I could get out of the fabric noose. I called it my “social ligature” and groused about it whenever I could. I fussed so much about the stupidity of requiring a strip of material under my collar and over my shirt buttons that my bosses jokingly called me an anarchist. 

Were they actually right?

When women began burning their bras in protest in the 1960s, much the same motivation was behind their urge for freedom. The bra represented sexual oppression by the patriarchy that had been widespread for generations. It was a symbol of what society deemed appropriate for females and that appropriateness scale was set by people who didn't have to wear what was culturally demanded. Men set women's clothing standards. The need to be free (not just physically from straps and underwire) from the patriarchal bonds within our culture drove the movement. They were called feminists and anarchists. Stuffy news commentators called the bra burners wild and unhinged. They managed to eventually turn the narrative of the protests into something squalid and pornographic, suggesting that women were sex-addicted and wild, thereby taking the power of the original protests and making it seem silly and trivial.

But were these feminist pioneers really anarchists? 

The answer to both questions is a resounding, thunderous, “YES”. Giving up these symbols of thralldom is the basis and underpinning of the anarchic mentality. And yet, just like everything else culture tells us about things we should fear and ignore, it purposely gets this definition wrong, too.

As such, anarchy is perhaps the most misunderstood term in our social lexicon. The anarchy movement (if such a thing can be categorized as an organized movement) got a very bad reputation a century ago when small groups of so-called 'political anarchists' decided to hurl nail bombs at people. History provides an example of this all-too common misapplication of the term by describing the Italian terrorists Sacco and Vanzetti as political anarchists. They were actually nihilists, as all terrorists are.

Political anarchy is an oxymoron. Anarchists may work together for a common goal, but they never have clubs or parties. They typically don't believe anything good can come from organizing or joining a group. That activity too much resembles cooperation and cooperation usually means following rules set by someone. This is antithetical to the anarchic motivation.

In fact, if we were to redefine anarchism more effectively for the modern era, we might choose to refer to its inherent distrust of all group participation or organization at any level of the social experiment. Rules are to be challenged rather than blindly followed. The deep dysfunction in our government, today, is, to the anarchist, what happens when people just go along with what those in power deem appropriate, for far too long.

We cannot be serious when we say or sing "land of the free, home of the brave". Not when so many people are actively being fettered by established rules that keep some in power and money, while others struggle just to survive. An anarchist looking at this failing system would call our nation a capitalist empire, complete with our own non-monarchical aristocracy—can you say billionaires and lifetime politicians?—with an inbuilt and carefully maintained oppressive economic caste system. For this reason, no party, however defined in this system, is really anarchic in nature, especially not those that seek as their main doctrine to abolish or limit government. 

For instance, the farcical "Libertarian Party" (note the capital L) fancies itself an anarcho-capitalist ideology that holds as one of its core motivations the reduction of government while setting itself up as an ideal of the Founders' actual original idea. This apparently made up relationship to actual democracy and political anarchy (so-called) misses completely what anarchism actually is. Yet the Libertarian political philosophy gains traction among people who fancy themselves anti-tax, pro-capitalist rugged individualists, whatever that really means.

The reason the Libertarian Party never succeeds in gaining power is because, despite what they profess, they aren't actually a party of rugged individuals looking to break up government monopoly so people can live in a radical free market economy where those who are smart enough also make the most money. They are merely capitalist extremists. They actually want economic and policy control. Otherwise it might be communism. Their dogma is based on Randian objectivism in pretext (based on the hack philosopher and would-be kleptocrat Ayn Rand's ludicrously terrible books). Without even trying, Immanuel Kant dismantled objectivism long before Rand or her followers were spawned, but like all such hordes, the ability to read isn't required to be a groupie.

Anarchy doesn't have a party system. It doesn't need one. It doesn't participate in the group political process. Anarchy is internal within the individual, not extant in the masses as a whole. For this reason, it defies definition by political or cultural values. It bubbles up in one person when that person begins to question why things are the way they are. The internal impulse to challenge rules that exist with no real reason is how anarchy begins. But it doesn't seek power, nor does it wish to decide what is right for the whole population. While it simultaneously reaches for complete or universal objectivity in its criticism of the entire political and cultural experience, anarchy seeks to unravel the sweater and then the yarn and then liberate the sheep before they can be sheared again. It has no respect for establishments, even its own.

An anarchist, therefore, isn't someone who throws bombs or is just apparently a nonconformist, though these might sometimes be symptoms of anarchy’s misuse. An anarchist wants to take apart the machine because within the dismantled mechanism lay the chains of repression and oppression, of hate and bigotry and misogyny, of greed and lust for power.

Anarchy is often labeled as destructive, and truly, we might agree that the urge to take apart stupid rules is somewhat destructive. Yet, because it has no blinkered economic or political motivation, no ideological reins guiding it, no hypocritical need for power or control, it operates outside the normal definitions and accepted understandings of daily life. The illusion of destruction is the shadow of those century-old bombers, not of reality. 

Anarchy seeks to eliminate all barriers to freedom, to remove all scaffolds of power, to challenge every impulse and motivation for gain or control; it wants to question and then break the rules of normative behaviors ascribed to us by our culture. It rages against the machine by challenging the mentality that we need leaders because that implies the need for followers, which anarchy implicitly rejects. That these leaders are inherently good or that they have our best interests at heart is as silly as it is repugnant to our deeply repressed anarchist thinking.

What possible good can come from the anarchistic mindset? 

In its elemental form, anarchism is pure curiosity about—an undiluted desire for absolute freedom. Like a three-year-old child who is exploring the world intimately and cannot be shown enough data to fill the void of its intense, black hole-like curiosity, anarchism wants to understand things both at the galactic and atomic levels. It challenges what we are told to believe and it wants to know why we choose to  believe and then it wants to turn off the switch of belief to see what happens. 

How do I survive if I don't get a haircut and choose a white-collar job? What happens if I reject class and party affiliations; what happens if I prove that my belief system is inherently self-deceptive? These motivations to question power structures are healthy and necessary for any growing individual, but they are frowned upon by the establishment. And we all have the urge to question, whether we admit it or not or whether, strictly speaking, it is allowed or not.

For all of us, there are tensions that must be endured, veils that cannot be torn, boundaries that cannot be crossed, but at no time are we given real, objective reasons for these rules. (I’m not talking about monogamous relationships, here. Rather, I’m referring to the pressures to conform within our societal structures of power.) We merely go along for the ride, assuming that we have some obligation to do so, because that's what people do and have always done. The anarchist in all of us wants to know why we obey these pressures, as it gets busy crossing the uncrossable barriers and removing the obstructions to true freedom.

Society has taught us to dismiss anarchy as something unconscionable. We tend to think of it as unhinged, desperate, futile, rebellious, perhaps immature or intentionally reckless. We hear punk rock music or see stone-throwing protesters at a riot when this word is used. Yet, anarchy isn't wild or unaware of consequences or solely impulse-driven or interested in murder or dependent on terrorism or extremist ideologies. Some may indeed apply these definitions as a way to draw attention away from the disruptive intent of anarchy and back to themselves or their concocted political identity or to create a scapegoat, but all of it is really an avatar for gaining and solidifying power.

In fact, anarchy wants to break our dependencies on the illusions we all hold dear. It intends to question the normative behaviors our cultures demand of us and show why they don't really matter, or, are built on clouds and illusions. 

Anarchism isn’t ignorant or unlearned. It has an entire pantheon of freethinkers to learn from. Socrates, Spinoza, Einstein, Wittgenstein, Kant, Descartes and many others were most assuredly not rule followers, and as a result of their own anarchic tendencies, they broke the dominant hold of social pressures and changed the way we think and learn. The Founders, by breaking their connection to and destroying the hold of the Mad Hanoverian king on the colonies, were anarchists in the truest sense.

Because of this deep connection to prominent thinkers, anarchy actually loathes logical fallacies and self-referential "because I said so'' dictums. It doubts and challenges those who want power, those who want money, those who seek to oppress or repress for control. It is allergic to the host of apologia that shore up the foundations of the worst ideologies. Anarchy hates chains and wants to break them. This is why it is the ultimate anti-fascist movement. When we refer to the “F word” as it was used in the last century or as it once again raises its hydra-like heads in our own land, anarchy alone shouts and points to show clearly what is actually happening. Even if you don’t think you’ve got the tendency, when you say that the people seeking control of our nation are fascists, you’re speaking with the terminology of anarchism.

What about ethics or morality? If anarchy is so dead set against the abusive power structure, it must also despise things like gender, traditional roles, family values (or any values), individual rights or assigning labels, right? Doesn't this desire to dismantle hierarchies and establishments of power and nonsensical status systems also ultimately cause it to laugh and ridicule the politics of the individual? Won’t it scoff at veganism or gluten-free consolations; at pantheistic or polytheistic beliefs? Truly, anarchy mocks all self-labels, not because it wants people to all be blank, grey automatons (this is actually what totalitarian systems desire), but to force us to do the really hard thinking about why and how we have come to these labels for ourselves. It seeks to create an opportunity for each of us to make sure what we claim about ourselves isn’t part and parcel of the cultural strictures that it so laments. 

If this is true, isn’t it likely that anarchy actually exists to break protective barriers which shelter the innocent? Isn't this actually an immoral position?

The anarchic mindset is concerned with freedom. If you are not truly free, then whatever binds you is an unethical fetter. No anarchist will ever challenge an individual's right to select their own destiny or to love whomever they wish, so long as they aren’t just doing it because society demands it. There are certainly some who would consider this rash, ignorant, valueless, defeated thinking, but only because they oppose the argument for true freedom.

Judith Butler put the solution to this problem beautifully, though, not directly mentioning anarchy, "'We're constantly learning what freedom is and what equality is and what justice can be. And those challenges—the anti-slavery movement, the suffrage movement, the movement for LGBTQA+ rights—each of those struggles involve challenging people's existing ideas of who's

equal, who has the right to be free, and how do we define justice. We are all the time struggling to achieve that goal."

This is why anarchy has become a byword for terrorism and destruction, and certainly why it has gotten such a bad rap over the years. The people in power hate anarchy because it seeks to eliminate the illusions they create to keep the populace docile, but also, because people in power know that their power is tenuous at best. That power is incredibly susceptible to ideas that challenge the world they wish to create. This is why certain groups work so hard to "protect children" from books that teach actual history or that answer questions about gender, sexuality, race and misogyny; or that fight experiences that defy monochromatic, repressive value systems. Nothing could be more unstable, harmful or deadly to the free, pluralistic society and yet, this is exactly how things are in America and other countries in “The West”. If you grow up to think that anarchy is bad, or if the term ‘intellectual’ becomes a dirty word, those in control win.

Certainly, you don't have to like punk rock music, wear torn jeans, have a brightly-colored mohawk or throw punches at fascists (though, that last one does sound fun) in order to be an anarchist. Each of us has the seed of anarchy in our breast, waiting for enough free thought to grow and blossom into the powerful flower of freedom. One might find, with a little careful reflection, that many more of us are actually anarchists than we know.

Freethinkers, the incurably curious, those interested in questions of liberty and freedom, sexual and gender rights, equity, equality, unimpeded access to information, dedication to tearing down hack social mores that exist because "that's how its always been"; even the stark refusal to wear a tie or other garments of social control, even just the urge to read banned books or promote free speech, are all serious symptoms of anarchy. 

We are told that patriotism is supporting the founding principles of our nation, but only on holidays and only in a red, white and blue flag shirt or hat. But, if we care about freedom, if we care about people and if we care about bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice, it is the sign of being part of the anarchical counter-culture, which is slowly poisoning the roots of the kudzu-like growth of totalitarianism as it sends its tendrils into every aspect of our national life. 

We all have a little, some more than others, but it has never been needed more. If you're tired of following stupid rules just because someone you didn't vote for decides to eliminate your freedom to decide for yourself, it may be time to introduce a little anarchy.